Khatta Meetha Baingan (Doi Begun)

This Khatta Meetha Baingan (Doi Begun) is a simple recipe with brinjals courtesy an old college mate, Souvik.

Souvik was in town and I had heard that he cooks regularly at his own home. When I mentioned that I had never tasted his cooking, he said- come home and I will cook something.

Now, a simple search informs me that he lives 7432 km (4618 miles) away from where I live. He’s definitely more than 500miles away from his hometown. He is visiting his ailing parents and tries to be with them at least twice a year. Going so far away to taste his cooking? I don’t think that makes sense.

I invited him for lunch and prepared a few simple dishes. Last time I had baked some salmon which he liked. I requested him to prepare one dish with the rider that I have minimal equipment right now in this new apartment. He looked a bit thinner and older but otherwise ok. It was really good to see him coping well with all the changes around his immediate family.

He suggested this really simple dish called Doi Begun (Eggplant in Yoghurt sauce). Doi means yoghurt or curd and Begun is brinjal or eggplant. It uses a very common vegetable- which is available almost throughout the year so I think it’s a very useful recipe to keep in your meal plan.

Professor Cooknomore behind Khatta Meetha Baingan

For Wolverine fans, my friend looks a bit like Professor X. So, I’m calling him Professor Cooknomore. 🙂

Souvik and I were classmates during 3 years of studying economics in college. He was a shy introverted and serious student who later went on to pursue academics to become a college professor himself. I went in a completely different direction to pursue an MBA and then meandered along in different corporate roles.

He is not big on social media and may have more of an academic interest in it. Like he recently asked me why don’t you pursue a PhD.

I asked, “Why would I do that?”.

And he said in a matter-of-fact way, “For Fun”.

Now, how many of us can relate to doing a doctorate for fun? Those words made me pause.

I reflected and looked back upon a bucket list created when I was younger. How would my younger self want to steer this conversation ahead?

A PhD was not on it for sure! And yet, I have been suggested that by several people now.

I laughed my head off at some of the impossibly naive items on that list made by a younger hopeful self-much before my marriage and disillusionment. I’m mildly embarrassed and sharing a snippet of it just for fun.

The last two are really something, aren’t they? 😉 The older me actually detests the idea of some of them. So definitely I have changed.

Keeping it real, I did tick off quite a few other things on that list– so it wasn’t such a wasteful exercise either. Have you ever created a fanciful bucket list? Maybe some of you have actually ticked off everything on your bucket list already. How about passing on your wisdom to others?

Khatta Meetha Baingan born out of difficult people

Most of my time went in actually catering to a petulant husband and demanding schedule at work and home. New connections that were to be built or rebuilt in a completely new city took up most of my free time.

Cooking remained a significant part of my life which I had not anticipated earlier. My husband’s dietary requirements changed constantly which led to multiple levels of chaos in the household. Managing that along with managing a full-time helper who was recruited regularly and trained to be at home was demanding. I had to play the role of a local guardian and also keep them trouble free in a country that was quite alien and strict in many legal matters.

Some of these girls came with a lot of troubles back home and I could relate to their struggles to keep earning somehow to save the family. But beyond a point sometimes people misuse and abuse empathy.

My health took a severe beating with my husband dumping more and more on me and doing lesser and lesser himself. He wanted a stress-free life. Easiest was to pass on the stress to wife.

More free time to play, go to the gym, create music, watch tv and enjoy the company of others.

Definitely marriage was an excuse for him it seems for 10 years of abuse of a wife/partner. Almost like a free labour camp, you know. Hey, every woman- make your husband a slave owner master! Is that the secret to a happy life for all women?

Khatta Meetha Baingan has a genuine authentic origin

It’s so easy to profess love when you want to marry and after 10years of marriage call it off saying I was not in love.

• Nobody cared whether I got anything to even eat while they were discussing for 5 years how I need therapy. Weird but true.
• Forget about whether there was food suitable for my dietary requirements.
• Who cared whether I had a roof over my head?
• If I had clothes to wear.
• Whether I was able to survive after zero healthcare or support provided.
• Oh how about utilities- water, gas, electricity, mobile or internet connection?

And hey, don’t forget there’s continuous assault of suggested behavior changes (out of me) to serve a husband who cheated on marriage repeatedly with no changes in his behavior.

Writing off all my work with easy effortless shrug of a shocking statement- “I wasn’t in love. I’m not interested in the marriage”. (Surprising when the facts were recasted and rewritten so blatantly)

Well, after many years of using a wife to entertain, save money, free labour and lots of free time to enable his happy comfortable life, I guess, it’s very easy to forget the other person’s labour.

So easy to tell others how the wife was apparently impossible to live with after the husband has tried to make her (unsuccessfully) into a robotic clone.

I mean every act of own shortcoming or depressed anxiety ridden behaviour passed off as a failure of the partner or a parent in complying with such a beautiful alternate version of reality?

I grieve for the loss of innocence of a partner who wishes to change every wife to fit into his little black box of perfect innocence with 0% successes and 100% failures.

Like you test in a scientific experiment with human beings as lab rats? Every second of your life must be so positive- anybody asking you to do something which you don’t want to do must be immediately discarded. It must be passed on the wife.

Khatta Meetha Baingan in the context of “comfort foods”

How does this recipe or dish help? I need to write a “gratitude journal”. I couldn’t share my gratitude with others. Perhaps they want to reward patience for 10years with alternate reality stories from a cheating spouse.

I don’t feel very thankful. Who should I thank for this feeling of stress from husband who is “protected” from “cruel wife”?

• Definitely extremely supportive parents who said- go and victimise another woman in order to fulfill your life’s purpose and ambitions.
• Celebrate your achievement of systematic methodical purposeful undermining and subjugating each wife by replicating it all over again.
• Only do it secretively and silently. And destroy her life from behind her back. Like you tried to do in previous two marriages but might have failed.
• Its time for you to do it now with the 3rd wife who tolerated your abuse for so many years.

My biggest lesson- protect yourself from people who don’t care for anybody or anything other than themselves. Each narrative impart through media from the eyes of MEN as controllers and WOMEN who are unpaid handmaidens to these controllers. Like keep on apologizing for simply taking birth. Keep on lauding those who achieved VICTORY through whatever means. YOu must MEASURE it. Otherwise, there’s no hope for you.

Are there any awards for such brilliant unfeeling and uncaring minds “training program” for abuse and victimization of women? Hey do earn more through lies and lying. You have earned the right to FREEDOM. Freedom and independence to abuse women. WOW!

You let go of your third wife in order to cheat on marriage. That’s such a wonderful objective and purpose in life! Go and find another wonderful excuse to cheat.

I had to do many things to save my skin, and my joints so this is not a random statement. It is linked to the origin of this website.

Khatta Meethe Baingan for extremely docile women

Do you want to be in the company of such men who cast off women like objects or toilet paper in order to be able to repurchase toilet paper (aka another wife) themselves?

Oh, you don’t see any falsehoods here and fake narratives? Go to my husband and in-laws.

They will teach you how to dupe and commit fraud multiple times in life. Extreme viewpoint about life in that “HOME“.

How they were always right in 3 marriages committed to and discarded. And no partner will get a say in between! He will listen, nod and then go on to find more devious ways to somehow anyways discard the wife.

So, cheers to “viewpoints” enabled by entire universe for FOURTH MARRIAGE. I am really done here in this particular DOCTOR’s office where I took my ailing depressed mother who is struggling to remember taking her pills.

Here’s the extreme point of view from therapists, husband, inlaws, lawyers and many other extremely concerned people that I take home as my learnings.

Hope this helps the universe in enabling another call for murdering a wife-

1. Wife doesn’t need to ask a 40-yr old about retirement planning. (huh?) Be highly secretive in siphoning off savings made through her work. Deny there was any savings during any number of years of marriage.
2. Put that money elsewhere so that she cannot talk about it. Continue to accuse and abuse the wife. Really, women are not allowed to discuss finances in adult marriages? (Awesome! Let’s continue….)
3. Keep all household goods and make her pay for passage, new housing, new furniture, new equipment, basically make sure she’s financially crippled in addition to her limbs being affected. Add MORE stress on a person with auto-immune disease. Then start spending all money on others on your own enjoyment of life stating extreme “necessity”. (Wife must have no necessities, comforts or luxuries- they can survive on thin air and false promises in ashrams)
4. Mother-in-law and father-in-law will need something to blame the daughter-in-law perpetually- find some faults in her character or something
5. Rape is not rape. Use the woman and discard her immediately to make her feel like shit without her suspecting anything stating that’s for her “safety”(He’s being an educated ‘gentleman’ helped by therapists).

Khatta Meetha Baingan for those who love lazy men

One letter of apology from a man can write off years of work from a woman. Gives a clear conscience and green signal to continue to cheat. Didn’t you know that?

So said some very erudite people who strangely wouldn’t have the same done unto them. Well, what am I talking about? If you are a man, I ask you- is this ok for your own mother or daughter?

Check this out-

1. Violence on women is not violence. (It is justified punishment against disrespect towards the MAN!) Display your vaginal pictures in front of the entire court and many lawyers as evidence of violence. Humiliate and abuse the woman more with the help of other rapists.
2. Women must be loyal, but men can cheat all the time. (Do malign, accuse and abuse them incessantly – then run away)
3. Who needs to protect wife or daughter in law? (Apparently not required)
4. Protect the husband (the wonderful perfect son). Make him feel very safe, comfortable, loved – like a precious asset to the family. Else wife is deemed to be “cruel”. His flaws are “darling cute ones “including violence upon wife. The wife’s flaws are supposedly worthy of the gallows (have you heard a more lopsided argument?).
5. Use her own friends and relatives against her by lying to them and then hiding own acts of treachery. Go behind her back and destabilize her in case she tries to seek employment to save her life. If she gets temporary work, immediately discard her into a garbage bin or extract money from her. Return to restate how you are not responsible every time there’s a reminder about your inhuman treatment. The problem was all in the “woman’s body”. She should have been a man!

That didn’t inspire me much. For liars and rapists everywhere here’s a lesson for you to emulate in order to cheat and abuse more women.

Sounds a bit of a script from a neanderthal ape-man or someone with extremely crooked intentions. I can’t sit through such twisted narratives to make vulnerable women more helpless in order to mollycoddle men.

So, I choose to stay away from such negative false narratives written by highly creative brains.

Let him restart the same set of lies all over again with another unsuspecting man/woman. You may find this “PROJECT MANCHILD” right up your alley!

Let’s get to the recipe.

Drive behind Khatta Meetha Baingan

Why Khatta Meetha Baingan?

It was a natural extension of the Doi Begun recipe shared by Souvik.

In the recipe shared by him you just fry the brinjals. Keep aside. Make a sauce of yoghurt, cumin powder, coriander powder, salt and fresh grated ginger. Then you pour the sauce and mix it with the fried brinjal.

Do check out the video of him cooking. It’s easy to follow. I think it was sporting of him to agree to cook this dish on my insistence in my kitchen with basic equipment.

He was rather comfortable himself with food cooked very minimally. Somewhere there was a subtle message behind it of austerity, and simplicity. Perhaps as a contrast to some of our attempts to make more delicious exotic experimental foods every day.

He espouses healthy food that perhaps serves his own goals of a longer life. A life which is productive and responsible towards others (mainly himself, his academic community and his parents).

Let me be honest, I didn’t like the dish so much myself. Here’s my inner critic rising a bit. For example, I would have fried the brinjal a bit longer. I would have salted it a bit perhaps.

A little Meandering history of Doi Begun

What I liked was the thought behind it. Souvik shared a memory of how he first cooked it for a friend/colleague who followed the Ananda Marga sect. His friend followed a strict vegetarian diet and Souvik made this with minimum spices. He mentioned you can’t use onions and garlic for them.

Maybe onions and garlic don’t suit their health/palate. There’s definitely a cross on these ingredients in the preparation of Saatvik food. Or perhaps there’s some attempt to narrate how to make the cooking process look really effortless. Paradoxically, I can totally relate to that as well.

I have many friends in their middle or older age who see my work as perhaps more suited for those who don’t actually care about their health. Or perhaps they don’t like the fuss or the amount of time spent in the kitchen in elaborate meal preparations.

When you truly enjoy cooking- you may find its not so demanding- more relaxing and sometimes really joyful. To each his/her own as far as food choices is concerned.

But truth be told, I am always conscious that as far as food is concerned, most people are struggling with this dance between the opposite tensions of health and taste. Again, two very subjective and contextual matters.

I remember my friendly neighbour Meghna shared earlier- life is finding a balance between extremes. Many of us are trying to do that and find the middle path.

As a student through life, I am sharing this little recipe from another book which celebrates Life and Food in Bengal. It’s called Beguner Tak but you can rename it as Khatta Meetha Baingan (Sweet and Sour Eggplant).

This one has onions and garlic in it so that wouldn’t have worked.

Khatta Meetha Baingan and Doi Begun are similar but different

Next, I went through my older notes of various recipes tried over the years. I have made Khatta Meeta Baingan (Doi Begun) many times.

This was prepared for a Poila Boishakh party and I remember that it was a big hit. Goes well with rice as well as chapatis or parathas.

But again, it has many spices and definitely has onions and garlic. So that wouldn’t do either based upon the history and conditions behind Souvik’s original Doi Begun recipe.

I took it upon myself to prepare a simplified version. Also keeping in mind, the induction cooking method and minimising the time required for cooking.

Let’s look at a positive spin on this- a few constraints but you can still get a tasty dish end of the day. Sometimes constraints help you in doing some kitchen experiments.

Addition of Potatoes in Khatta Meetha Baingan

To add potatoes or not? Here’s what I think. The recipe doesn’t need the potatoes. But you can add them if you want the potatoes assuming you are not following a diabetic diet. 🙂

I cut the vegetables into thinner longer pieces to save on the cooking time. Also, the Khatta Meetha (sweet and sour) taste can come from the special imli (tamarind) chutney that is easily available now in most supermarkets. Or you can try online stores.

You don’t need to add the yoghurt to the sauce if you want to make it dairyfree. Just make a paste out of the tamarind chutney and a bit of water. It still works.

But the yoghurt adds a creamy base, and it balances the sharp taste of the chutney perfectly. You may be reminded of a yummy chaat with the flavours used in this extremely simplified recipe.

Go ahead and try it. I definitely recommend this even for beginners who haven’t hosted many dinner parties.

Just a note of caution- brinjal/eggplant is a nightshade vegetable. I have been allergic to nightshades for different periods of my life. Would get horrible rashes and itching all over every time I had brinjals. I can empathise if you love this vegetable but are unable to eat it for any reasons.

I’m grateful today that I can eat it without any severe allergic symptoms. I recently added it to fish curries and nothing untoward happened to me. Definitely won’t overdo it.

I have an ailing mother and she’s in the last leg of her life. I choose to be with her in this moment of pain and suffering. We all have our trauma with many people related to difficult food choices or difficult to have any reasonable conversation.

Footnote

Riding a bus in my hometown

It’s been a while since I did something like that

Reminded me of my student days

And I felt a bit awkward and on display

Some of my notions of personal safe space

Challenged by the noise, the nudges and the jostling

Who would have thought social distancing was needed

But is a far cry in this crowded city with multitudes

Any of you felt more comfortable in crowds?

I can understand your need for safety of numbers

And yet perhaps pushed to let go of your inhibition

With various unintentional jibes from strangers

When your own loved ones insulted and assaulted you

Did you actually think that perhaps strangers are kinder?

Melting Lemon Drop 09.08.2026